Introduction

With the accession to the throne of Āghā Muaḥmmad Khān in 1788/9, the advent of the Qājār period in Iran ushered in an era of uneasy flux and transition in the political, economic, social, cultural, and religious arenas of that country. Whether it was the taking hold of Western influence, thanks to increased travel, commerce, and communication between Iran and Europe; the increasing pressure for political reform that ultimately gave rise to the Constitutional Revolution; or the millennial expectations that culminated in the declaration of a young Shīrāzī merchant, Sayyid ‘Alī Muḥammad, to be the Mahdī (rightly-guided one) foretold by Twelver Shi‘īprophecies, and his subsequent execution, Iran bubbled in ferment even as its fundamental institutions remained entrenched in a miry medievalism that successfully withstood any real change. This strange admixture of medieval and modern, of repose and reform, was to remain in place until Rizā Shāh Pahlavī’s arrival to power thrust Iran abruptly into contemporary twentieth-century life.

To a large extent, Qājār-era poetry reflects the ambivalent nature of the period. Despite a growing willingness among poets – particularly those of the latter half of the nineteenth century – to confront topical issues and to use their work to promote political and social agendas, poetry of this time for the most part remains true to its bāz gasht, or Revivalist, roots, with poets employing traditional imagery to laud the exploits of kings and viziers while (for the most part) ignoring the changes and discontents sweeping the country. Jan Rypka complains that “[o]n the whole the poetry of the 13th/19th century cannot be said to have attained a profound harmony with the life of the nation and of the country,” and remarks upon the dearth of a “powerful voice of national consciousness, a voice that might have been regarded as a real reaction to actual life and not merely as a reverberation of court chatter on interesting events.” Even sharper criticism was leveled by reform-minded intellectuals of the period, who denigrated its poetry as “esthetically repulsive, morally decadent, and socially harmful.”

As Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak has observed, the most prominent and well-regarded poet of the Qājārī era, Mīrzā Ḥabīb Allāh Shīrāzī, known as “Qā’ānī (d. 1854), is often regarded as an exemplar of this state of affairs.